Category Archives: Philosophy

Arts, History, Philosophy, Science

Philosophy: The four elements and atomism

GREEK PHILOSOPHY

The dawn of scientific thought in Ancient Greece.

THE question of what the universe is made of was still a major concern of Greek philosophers in the fifth century BCE. A native of Akragas in Sicily named Empedocles thought that everything was composed of a single element (known as the Milesian line of thought). Later, however, he took this a step further, identifying four distinct elements – earth, water, air and fire – which in different proportions formed all the different substances in the universe. Developing his ideas from the monism of Parmenides, he argued that these elements must therefore be eternal and unalterable, but reasoned that change was possible if some sort of force altered the mixture of elements.

He suggested that two opposing forces, which he poetically called ‘Love’ and ‘Strife’, caused attraction or separation of the elements and brought about changes in the composition of substances. His classification of the substances later known as the four classical elements was widely accepted by philosophers and was a cornerstone of alchemy until the Renaissance (the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era and covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries).

Democritus and Leucippus: atomism

A theory of matter proposed by Leucippus and his pupil Democritus was less influential at the time than the ‘four elements’ proposed by their contemporary Empedocles. In retrospect, it seems closer to modern scientific understanding. They suggested that everything in the universe is composed of minute, unalterable and indivisible particles, which they called atoms (from the Greek atomos, uncuttable). These, they argued, are free to move through empty space, combining in constantly changing configurations.

The assertion there is such a thing as a void, an empty space, may be one reason these ideas were originally considered unacceptable. According to their theory, the number of atoms is infinite, and different kinds of atoms with different characteristics determine the properties of the substance they form together. Because the atoms are indestructible, when a substance, or even a human body decays, its atoms are dispersed and reconstituted in another form.

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Philosophy, Science

Philosophy and Science

REASONING

Einstein

THROUGHOUT much of the history of philosophy, there was no such thing as science in its modern form: in fact, it was from philosophical enquiry that modern science has evolved. The questions that metaphysics set out to answer about the structure and substance of the universe prompted theories that later became the foundations of natural philosophy, the precursor of what we now call physics. The process of rational argument, meanwhile, underpins the ‘scientific method’.

. Previously (Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche

Since the 18th century, many of the original questions of metaphysics have been answered by observation, experiment and measurement, and philosophy appeared to be redundant in these areas. Philosophers have since changed their focus to examine science itself. Some, like Hume, challenged the validity of inductive reasoning (empiricism) in science, while others sought to clarify the meaning of terms used by science, opening up a ‘philosophy of science’ that considers areas such as scientific ethics and the way science makes progress.

Logic

In seeking answers to questions about the universe and our place in it, philosophy is distinguished from religion or mere convention by its use of reasoning. Philosophy proposes ideas because of thought with the assertions justified with sound rational argument. Convention or mere belief is not enough. Various logical techniques have been devised to show whether an argument is valid or fallacious.

In simple terms, logic is the process of inferring a conclusion from statements known as premises, either deriving a general principle from specific examples (inductive reasoning) or reaching a conclusion from general statements (deductive reasoning). The classical form of logical argument, the syllogism, consisting of two premises and a conclusion, was officially formalised by Aristotle and has remained the mainstay of philosophical logic until advances in mathematical logic brought in new ideas in the 19th century. Later, in the 20th century, symbolic logic opened new fields still further within philosophy.

Metaphysics

For the first philosophers, the burning question was: ‘What is everything made of?’ At its most basic, this is the central question of a branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. Many of the theories proposed by the ancient Greek philosophers – the notions of elements, atoms, and so on – formed the basis of modern science, which has since provided evidence-based explanations for these fundamental questions.

Metaphysics, however, has evolved into a field of enquiry beyond the realms of science: as well as dealing with the make-up of the cosmos, it examines the nature of what exists, including such ideas as the properties of material things, the difference between mind and matter, cause and effect, and the nature of existence, being and reality (ontology).

Although some philosophers have challenged the validity of metaphysics in the face of scientific discovery, recent developments in areas such as quantum mechanics have renewed interest in metaphysical theories.

. See also Philosophy: An introduction…
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Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche

1844 – 1900

The work of Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history.

One of the most profound, enigmatic and ultimately controversial philosophers in the whole of the Western canon, Nietzsche’s work has been variously appropriated, vilified, venerated or simply misunderstood. Through the relationship of his sister, Elisabeth, with the national socialists in Germany, Nietzsche’s philosophy has wrongly gained the reputation of supporting Nazism, though his concept of the  Übermensch or ‘superman’, is in fact closer to Aristotle’s man of virtue than the glorified Aryan hero. Elisabeth’s edited and altered collection of Nietzsche’s writings, published shortly after his death as The Will to Power, has done much to mar the reception of Nietzsche’s thought in the twentieth century. As a result, it may be another hundred years before his philosophy is widely appreciated for the genius that it is. Freud said of Nietzsche that ‘he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live’.

Son of a Protestant clergyman, Nietzsche gained a professorship at the University of Basel at the remarkable age of only twenty-four. After ten years, ill health forced him to retire into a solitudinous but vagrant lifestyle across Europe, whence he devoted himself to writing and recuperation. He eventually received worldwide fame during the last decade or so of his life. Of this he was probably unaware, since, in 1889, Nietzsche suffered a final and irreversible breakdown and remained insane until his death.

Nietzsche’s writings are varied and cover diverse topics, from ethics and religion to metaphysics and epistemology (study of the source, nature, and limitations of knowledge). He is most renowned, however, for his concept of ‘the will to power’. Influenced by Schopenhauer to a certain extent, albeit without so much metaphysical baggage, Nietzsche saw the fundamental driving force of the individual as expressed in the need to dominate and control the external forces operating upon him. As such, Nietzsche’s individual requires what the existentialists would later give him, the power to be master of his own destiny.

The frustration of this urge is responsible for the existence of various moral systems and religious institutions, all of which attempt to bind and subdue the will. Perhaps because of his father’s influence, Nietzsche was particularly hostile to Christianity, which he famously once described as being a ‘slave morality’. In it he saw the resentment of the weak towards the strong. Those who failed to have the courage to master their own passions, who lacked, ultimately, inner strength of character, sought revenge on those stronger than themselves, not in this life, but in a fictional ‘other’ world, where some other power, namely God, would wreak vengeance on their behalf.

Unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche did not see the will to power as something to be resisted, but pursued and affirmed. It is, Nietzsche insists, the exuberance of spring, the affirmation of life, the saying of ‘Yes!’ However, as already outlined, Nietzsche did not advocate the dominance of the strong over the weak, nor suggest that mastery of the will to power belonged to some special elite by virtue of birth. Rather he described, historically, how the domination of the strong results in, and is necessary to, what we would now call, the ‘evolutionary progress’ of the human being. But strength, as Nietzsche understands it, is not constituted in physical, but rather psychical, force. The strong are those who are more complete, as human beings, who have learnt to sublimate and control their passions, to channel the will to power into a creative force.

Neither, contrary to popular misunderstanding, did Nietzsche endorse the ‘master morality’ – moral systems peculiar to the aristocracy – although it is true he thought it more life affirming than ‘slave morality’, which he insists is typified within Christianity. Rather, Nietzsche held that the strong had a duty towards the less fortunate: ‘The man of virtue, too, helps the unfortunate, but not, or almost not, out of pity, but prompted by an urge which is begotten by the excess of power’.

. Previously (Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Plato

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